


the holding of one hundred hands

by sajere1



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-14 03:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: Roxana does not know how to broach the topic of wanting to have sex with a very beautiful woman – not in that Roxana does not want to have sex with a beautiful woman, or in that there is not a beautiful woman with her who she is fairly certain also wants to have sex with her, and not even really in that she mighty have to fight and destroy this beautiful woman tomorrow on the battlefield. Roxana is not shy about what she wants. She has been making her interest abundantly clear for ages, and there is nothing different now.There is just something very hard, Roxana reflects, about asking someone to have sex near the edge of a cliff. Not only are you outside, where things may be sticky and humid and easily spotted by passerby, but if you get too caught up in it you might just fall off. And what an embarrassing death that would be, after training for years to die in a perfectly respectable battle.So Roxana decides to approach the topic subtly. Except that Roxana is not very subtle, and never has been, so when she tries it, it comes out as: “So have you taken many to bed before?”[a collection of scenes for roxana and kassandra that weren't in the game, but should've been]





	1. i know that it's delicate

**Author's Note:**

> an extended picnic conversation.
> 
> these are not heavily edited, and i wasn't going to put them up here, but there's ONLY 3 roxana/kassandra fics so im MORALLY OBLIGATED
> 
> find me yelling abt hot girls on tumblr @uk-otoa

Roxana does not know how to broach the topic of wanting to have sex with a very beautiful woman – not in that Roxana does not want to have sex with a beautiful woman, or in that there is not a beautiful woman with her who she is fairly certain also wants to have sex with her, and not even really in that she mighty have to fight and destroy this beautiful woman tomorrow on the battlefield. Roxana is not shy about what she wants. She has been making her interest abundantly clear for ages, and there is nothing different now.

There is just something very hand, Roxana reflects, about asking someone to have sex near the edge of a cliff. Not only are you outside, where things may be sticky and humid and easily spotted by passerby, but if you get too caught up in it you might just fall off. And what an embarrassing death that would be, after training for years to die in a perfectly respectable battle.

So Roxana decides to approach the topic subtly. Except that Roxana is not very subtle, and never has been, so when she tries it, it comes out as: “So have you taken many to bed before?”

Her immediate expectation is that Kassandra is going to recoil and, potentially, laugh her ass off. Instead, Kassandra leans into where their arms are touching, smiles at her, and says, “All my life, or this last half year alone?”

Roxana shoves her playfully. “Like there’ll be that much difference,” she teases. “This last half year alone, then.”

“Eight,” Kassandra says. “If we are counting only women, then five.”

WHAT. “WHAT,” Roxana says, whirling to see her.

Kassandra grins, visibly swelling at the victory that for once, she’s made Roxana blush. “I have been doing a lot of travelling,” she shrugs. “Two of them are on my boat now. We are – not serious,” she adds hastily, looking down at her feet at Roxana’s quirked eyebrows. “Um. I mean. It is not. I am not currently with either of them, romantically, such as it is.”

“I assume they get along.” After the initial shock, Roxana isn’t particularly surprised; Kassandra is very attractive, after all, and Roxana can’t be the only one who’s noticed. And if Kassandra’s partners are open to other people…well, it isn’t how Roxana wants Kassandra, necessarily, but. She can’t lie and say it wouldn’t be worth it.

To her surprise, Kassandra laughs aloud. “They both stopped sleeping with me a little while ago because they get along so well,” she says, wry. Roxana searches for any resentment in Kassandra’s voice but finds none – just the genuine warmth of teasing close friends. “I think they will probably return to Thyia’s home in Lalaia together, once they’ve both gotten their fill of adventure. They are good lieutenants.”

“You seem happy for them.”

“They are my friends.” Kassandra turns to Roxana with something a little like surprise. “There were not any illusions between us about our relationship. And I have never seen either of them smile so much as when they are fooling around with the sails together.”

Roxana allows herself a moment to sip her wine and imagine what that scene must be like – salt in the air, sailors scurrying around on all sides, and a pair of women laughing, one of them reaching over to kiss the other on the nose as they forget the sails and let them drop. Eyes only for each other as the sail hits them and their crewmates make mocking noises. She does not know what these women look like, but in her mind’s eye, they are both warriors – one taller, shaped almost like a goddess, with a braid and soft eyes, and one a little shorter, black hair pulled up and wild, giggling as she looks at Kassandra.

She shakes the vision off. It makes her feel…she doesn’t know. Nostalgic, for something that never was. “Your crew sounds like fun.”

Kassandra nods, taking a sip of her own drink. “They are like a family, in many ways,” she says, in a voice that is a little far away.

And then, after two hours of sitting on this cliff and talking about nothing and tucking Roxanne’s hair behind her ears, Kassandra says, “What was your brother’s name?”

“Bessus,” Roxana says automatically – and then, when the question really takes root, sets down her cup and gives Kassandra a twisted frown. “I told you, I do not come up here to live in the past.”

“Ah – you’re right. Forgive me.” Kassandra has her chin perched on her knee, watching Roxana with that soft curiosity she has that makes something delightful in Roxana’s stomach flip. “I was just…sparring often makes me think of happier times with my family, and it made me wonder about yours.”

Roxana glances at where she discarded her shield on top of both of their swords, just on the edge of the blanket. It had been a pain to set up, the whole picnic thing. They’d had to trek all the way back to town to buy the supplies and the food and then all the way back up, and then it had taken ages for Kassandra to prepare it into any meal worthy of her. (That’s what Roxana had said, that there were few meals worthy of Kassandra, and Kassandra had looked at her with that lost sparkle she got whenever Roxana initiated the flirting, and Roxana is going to get back of the topic of sex eventually, she’s going to make it there.) But between the conversation and the company and the softness of what should’ve felt like a convict’s last meal…it had been worth it.

“What about your family, then?” Roxana says, twirling an apple lightly between her fingers, a nervous grab and toss she wouldn’t notice about herself except that Kassandra watches it and smiles. “Any brothers or sisters?”

Kassandra’s smile is sad, as it too oft is. “A brother, sort of,” she says. “Well – two. But one is adopted, and he doesn’t know he is my brother.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It is.”

“How about this.” Roxana likes things best when they are presented as competitions, and from the way Kassandra’s eyes lit up when they first met to spar, it’s a mutual feeling. “I’ll tell you something about my family for everything you tell me about yours. You have my brother’s name, so it’s your turn.”

Kassandra’s smile doesn’t change, but she tilts her head and somehow the shadows seem less stark on her face, the sorrow fading. “Alexios,” she says, and grabs an apple of her own to take a large bite out of, talking with her mouth full in a way that is ungraceful and very unbefitting of women of stature and not at all cute. “Your turn.”

Bessus was three years older than Roxana, and loved to rub it in. Alexios was born when Kassandra was 7 – he’s 15 now. Roxana’s father was far better at archery than anything close range, but her mother loved glaives. Kassandra’s sword she cherishes and polishes was her father’s before he disappeared, and her mother served as a boat captain for a good time. Roxana’s father would talk about the gods from morning till night in every song, life lesson, and shout. Kassandra’s friend Barnabas – not family, so this fact didn’t count, but it is relevant, alright – Barnabas loves the gods so much that when Kassandra first met him, he thought she was a demigod.

“I can’t blame him,” Roxana says, laughing. They’ve eaten their way through most of the food by now, apple cores set to the side, and Roxana has allowed her fidgeting to convert to lightly rubbing the back of Kassandra’s hand instead. “When you first fought me, I thought you must be Achilles reborn.”

“I am a descendant of Leonidas, according to my mother,” Kassandra says thoughtfully. “So, there, that’s the fact about my family. But Barnabas – he is a whole other level. There is a historian on our boat, Herodotos, and Barnabas won’t let him write for two words without invoking the muses for several hours. If you told Barnabas there was a sea monster living in your ear, he’d believe you.”

“He sounds like a real dimwit,” Roxana laughs.

Kassandra looks away, her smile soft again. “Actually,” she says, her voice full of warmth, “he’s one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met.”

Roxana takes a second to just study her. Kassandra is gorgeous – steep cheekbones, long lashes, hair pulled aside. She looks like a warrior. But the way her voice is, the way her being is – she also looks like a woman.

Roxana follows Kassandra’s gaze to the island of Melos, and remembers, very suddenly, that she is a woman Roxana is going to have to kill – and for a gut-wrenching moment amidst all the flirtation, she isn’t sure she wants to.


	2. now we're young enough to try to build a better life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deimos - Alexios - is inducted into the crew of the Adrestia. It isn't a smooth transition.

On day four of Alexios snapping at anyone who gives him an order and talking over the other lieutenants, Roxana finally throws down the rope she’s tying. “Pick up a spear,” she says, pulling her shield off her back and tossing it to the side.

Alexios has the audacity to scoff at her. On the bow’s upper deck Roxana catches sight of Myrrine starting to walk towards them in alarm only for a hand on her shoulder to stop her. Kassandra pulls her mother back and murmurs something in her ear, and it is hardly Roxana’s fault for her fluttering heart when Kassandra looks right at her, smiles, and nods her trust. Even now, years after they’d pulled each other off Melos’ shore, Kassandra’s gaze still has that haunt of tenderness that Roxana alone inspires. “You cannot beat me,” Alexios says, back on the lower deck, dragging Roxana back to face his smirk.

“Doesn’t matter,” Roxana says. Alexios’ eyebrows quirk, clearly unimpressed. “You want to fight. That’s what this is about, right? So let’s fight. Nonlethal, try not to draw blood, first one to tap out loses.”

Alexios – or Deimos, sometimes, he answers to the second but Kassandra insists on everyone using the first – draws out the sneer as he looks her up and down, eyeing where her form has lost some of the sculpted glaze she once cultivated in favor of more practical rower’s muscles. “Do not feel ashamed when I destroy you,” he says, voice dripping with malice and condescension as he stalks to the weapon rack.

“I won’t.”

It is not difficult to let him win. His confidence doesn’t come from nowhere; while he favors his right side and leaves himself open far too often, he has been trained from birth and it shows. With her only half on guard, it is not longer than half a minute before he has her face-up on the deck, spear at her throat.

“I win,” he says, and the arrogant tilt to his voice has not diminished yet.

Roxana taps out. “You did,” she says. Alexios spins the spear in hand as she stands, grin all sharp-toothed and feral and pleased with himself. The grin drops immediately when she says, “Show me how to do that move.”

He stops spinning the spear to give her a look of complete disbelief. “What?”

“I didn’t know it.” She did, of course, but that’s not the point. “Will you please teach me how to do it?”

He stares at her for a long moment before he laughs. “I see,” he says, “you want to learn my strategy so you can counter it next time. Nice try. Figure it out yourself.”

“I am not asking you to teach me so I can fight you,” Roxana says, calm. Off to the side, she can see Iola gathered with some bored crewmates, watching with a smile on her face. Roxana has to resist the urge to give her secretive smile back – it was Iola who did this with Roxana first, years ago, when she first stepped foot on the Adrestia. “I am asking you to teach me because you know something I didn’t, and I want to learn it so that I can use it against enemies, the next time we board a ship.”

Alexios stares at her for a long moment. Roxana stands her ground. It is a difficult thing, to humble herself before such a petulant adolescent, even if the humbling is false. But she is rewarded for her patience when he says “…fine, then,” and gruffly faces her with the spear again.

He is not a good teacher at first. Roxana wasn’t, either. It is several minutes before he thinks to call another member of the crew over to demonstrate on so Roxana can see it, and more after that to slow it down to one step at a time. It is an exercise in Roxana’s acting to act as though she isn’t getting it until he goes through the process, finally, with a slowness and a patience to it that she has no use for.

“I get it!” she says, and – purposefully clumsily – demonstrates the same move on another crewmate. The crew gathered to watch claps politely, and Alexios nods. She can see the relief in his face that he doesn’t have to spend any more time training this stupid girl, but she can also see that faint glint behind his eyes where arrogance has faded into a more muted, kinder pride in his student and his own teaching ability. She grasps his hand in her and smiles, a little more genuinely than the smiles she’d been giving him while he ‘taught’ her.

“Thank you for teaching me. I appreciate it.” She pats his hand and starts to walk away.

“What – where are you going?” Alexios demands, and it is gratifying to catch him so off guard.

Roxana pauses where she’d been walking away, glancing at him over her shoulder. “Is there more to the move?” she says.

“I thought you wanted to spar.” Alexios’ expression is so lost and young that, for a moment, Roxana looks past the trained killer and sees the sweet younger brother Kassandra described to her.

“We did. I lost.”

“Don’t you want to try again?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you lost!”

“So?”

He splutters and she sighs, turning back to face him, walking up until she can put a hand on his. He instinctively goes into a fighting stance, but his face continues to flicker surprise as she gently pushes his hand down, setting the spear to rest at his hip. “My goal was not to win,” she says, calm. “What would defeating you have gained me?”

“It – you would have been the winner, over me!”

“And that would mean nothing to me.” She looks him dead in the eye, a challenge as much as a reassurance. “You are not more than me for beating me, as I would not be more than you for beating you. We aren’t enemies, and encouraging us to be enemies would be counterproductive. This ship doesn’t have bragging rights.”

Alexios makes a frustrated noise. “Then why did you fight me?”

“To learn.” He scowls, trying to tug his spear out of her grip, only to find her hand is strong against his weapon; his eyes flicker up to her, surprised at her sudden ability when she had been so incapable before, and finds her still standing tall, looking him in the eye, stance relaxed but gaze all fire. “We are shipmates. We fight alongside each other, not against. We want to make each other better, stronger, more capable of fighting, so that we can rely on each other when enemies do come. We are not better than each other, we better each other.” She lets the spear go and he stumbles back at the sudden release. “And I have learned, so I am done.”

And she turns and walks back to the rope she was tying.

Several hours pass where he is even snappier than usual, enough that some of the newer crew they picked up at Elis shoot her irritated looks when they pass. She pays them no mind. Finally, frustratedly, he grabs a spear again and walks over to her.

“I want to spar,” he says, impatient. “Do you want to spar, or not?”

“No.” She long ago graduated from knotting and has been, for several minutes, tracing the map alongside the other lieutenants, Kassandra taking up Alexios’ space at the table with a barely-restrained smile as he stomped around the deck.

Roxana can almost hear him gritting his teeth behind her. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.” She gives him a single, disdainful look over her shoulder. “I bet Kassandra would love to spar, ask her.”

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” Kassandra agrees, but she hasn’t finished her sentence when Alexios makes an angry noise of disagreement.

“I want to spar you,” he insists.

She blinks, feigning innocence. “Why in the world would you want to fight me, specifically?”

“You were holding back earlier!” He’s got no restraint, yelling loud enough that Barnabas and Herodotus both look up from their usual bickering on the benches. “I didn’t really win. I will not have you taunting me like a child. Fight me for real!”

“Alexios – “ Myrrine begins from Roxana’s left, but again Kassandra’s hand on Myrinne’s arm stops her.

“Alexios,” Roxana says, turning to face him fully with venom, “why would I care if I could win against you or not?”

“Because – “ he makes a frustrated, general gesture.

“I will tell you why,” she says, stepping towards him, and Iola was more patient than Roxana at this part but Roxana is not a subtle person. “Because you think that the winner is better than the loser, and you want to win so you can know that you are better than me at combat. That’s right, yes?”

“Yes,” Alexios snarls.

“Then I am dropping you off this boat at the next stop.”

There is a noise of protest from Myrinne. “Roxana, what – “

“You probably could beat me,” Roxana says, even, where Alexios’s face is curled up in a snarl at her. “You have trained longer, under harder teachers, in more forms than I have. I would bet that you are the better fighter in most ways, if not in every way. You know that, too. You do not have to prove yourself on this boat, we all know what you can do. But you continue to try to, because you do not just want to prove yourself worthy of us, you want to prove yourself better than us.”

Her voice is sharp, sharper than she intends, and this time Kassandra’s hand is on Roxana’s arm, and the familiarity of callouses forces her to calm herself. “We are not enemies,” she says, and her voice is steadier now. “You cannot prove yourself better than us, because it is not ‘you’ and ‘us.’ You are a part of us. We work together, not against each other. But you do not feel that way.” She keeps her eyes steady on him. “So for the safety of the crew, I cannot allow you to work on this boat any longer.”

Without giving him a chance to respond, she turns back towards the map. Where Kassandra’s hand has been on her forearm, it slides down to her hand, and Roxana grips it tight. “Where can we next pull onto land?” she says evenly.

Myrinne is standing in stunned silence, but Iola is not. “We’re only a few days from Argolis,” she says, pointing at a pair of harbors on the map. “It would not be difficult for him to make it to Lakonia from there, either.”

“Then that is where we sail to next.” Roxana looks up at Kassandra. “Do you protest, captain?”

There is a long silence where Roxana can feel the certainty radiating from Alexios that his sister will save him, broken by Kassandra sighing minutely, and shaking her head.

“Then it is planned.” Roxana nods and steps away from the map. “Now, if you will all excuse me, I am headed to bed.”

And she turns on her heel and marches past Alexios’ frozen, horrified position, determined to get a good night’s sleep.

Swallowing pride is never easy. Over the next days, she catches Alexios arguing, panicked, with Kassandra, begging his mother to make her change her mind, tirelessly entreating Iola to his cause. None of them are to be. Even Myrinne – a token person out of the loop to take Alexios’ side, just as Kassandra had been Roxana’s confidante and comfort when Iola did this to her – falls on deaf ears when she begs Kassandra and Barnabas to reconsider. The boat, in some ways, is both more quiet and more dramatic than it has ever been.

But it finally happens, and Roxana knew it would.

It has been three days. They are only a day from Argolis, where they can drop off Alexios and find another lieutenant to take his and Myrinne’s places, since Myrinne will undoubtedly be accompanying him home. Kassandra is idly tracing the back of Roxana’s hand as she practices knots again, the two of them curled up against each other and exchanging anecdotes of their last trip to Argolis, stopping to giggle and rest foreheads against each other every few minutes.

It is then, in the midday, that Alexios finally approaches Roxana again. He sits down. He refuses to look at her.

“…I do not know how to do that knot,” Alexios finally says, physically painful though it sounds for him to say it. “Would you teach me?” And, at the silence that follows: “…please?”

Against Roxana’s arm, she feels Kassandra smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOO sorry for that break!! kh3 came out and i got caught up in the hype, school semester started up, had to navigate job hours. there was just a Lot Of Stuff. but rest assured i have not forgotten my good best girls [or rather, you guys kept reminding me of them <333]
> 
> was going to do these chronologically, but then i really wanted to do this one and wait to do some other ones, so uh. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ theyll come as they come i guess
> 
> title of the chapter is from 'mars' by sleeping at last, find me on tumblr @uk-otoa


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